So many toys, so little time...

Light wind sail of Sth Esplanade Bongaree this morning

Plenty of fun 7m super freak sail and f2 lightening. Sailing the flats on the sandbanks. Managed a few light wind water starts Practiced railing board up. Just magic

Pretending I'm on holidays. Burger by the jetty to chill out.




Bringing colour to windsurfing

Cheers Jeff

Where tomorrow fellas, I have a day needing to get wet and the tides are not that great, thinking of heading to Golden Pond unless you give me a plan.
PS, bending the rules I am sure, but my "1998 Mistral Explosion - 288 cm, 120 litres" is still a great board and is going for 99 cents tomorrow morning unless it is saved for a good local guy with change in the ashtray. Still flies, just looks like I do. 29 knots once on the lake.
Peter

Adam and myself are going to sail at Turner's Camp sometime from 2pm onwards if anyone's keen.

I went soft and did Golden Pond, reasonable 12-14 knot seabreeze from about 11 till 3. No jelly but plenty weed on the fin.

Great way to spend an afternoon.

Quite a few big boils in the flat water late as the wind started to drop. Didn't get to see what they were until right at the end. Large Turtle came up for a breath about 3m from me. Very happy for both of us that we didn't find one another earlier while the breeze was stronger.

No ****s given or received Paddles, just happy to be on the water. Hopefully that made up for your skunking at Sandstone Saturday morning .

One day I will crack it for which board to use. Would have been ideal for the JP SLW, but looked like being solid for a while when I rigged up. Too frikkin far to walk to the car at low tide to change.

See you next time.

Janet and I are organizing things so we can get to Sandstone on Monday - a bit of a drama but we need to get back out on those boards again! Been too long! Monday looks great with good wind and a middle of day tide. I'm a bit scared as it's been so long and my shoulder is still pretty sore, and I'm not sure how it will go wrestling the boom etc. Janet's scared because her last sailing session ended badly - washed under the jetty at Golden Beach, damaging a brand new sail. Let's hope it's a good day.

I'm back, a seven day cruise around tassie isn't going to upset my plans for a sailing Christmas, no, wait, I have to install the new spa and there's the family Christmas Day, and Janine needs a new car, bloody hell it looks like early Jan before I can try my new boards and sails... bugger...

Nah she says she doesn't hate it actually. Having such little sailing for so long now she feels like there's so much to try to learn that she'd like to spend some time back on the familiar Metal Rock just to get confidence and basic skills back.

If I can get away from work early I'll be there

Adam has been sticking his fingers where they shouldn't be and Brad was suss on the storm so I snuck down the front for a quick solo session on the big windsup with 24000 little blue friends. 10-12 knot conditions so used the 6.1m wave sail. Managed to tack my way up towards Bribie using the centreboard into the sea and then just the rear fins going with it and then gybed my way home downwind as the wind dropped out in front of the storm. Had a couple of spare thruster side fins in the car so I'm trying the big girl with them on as well as the centre fin and it seems to surf along the little bay swells nicer. Great fun board, sailing because you can!

A very windy Sandstone Point this afternoon. Adam was there early with Andrew and Janet then I turned up followed by The Pope and Brad was a latecomer showing up just as we were packing up. Solid 20kn plus conditions so I rigged a 5.5, Adam stuck with his 6.4 and the Pope did one run with a 6.4 and came straight in to drop to a 5.5. Andrew and Janet were frantically dropping sizes too and ended up using a 4.7 and a 5. Good fun sailing and we all stuck to the speedway track straight out from the beach as it was looking pretty wild out on the weed banks past the reef patches. Bad news for the afternoon was Andrew being carted away in an ambulance after smacking his ribs real hard, not a great way to start christmas as he'll be very sore for a while I reckon. Looks like onshore conditions for a week now so hopefully a bit of sailing to be had.

The pain was indescribable but at the moment the accumulated doses of morphine ( repeated), fentanyl, methoxyflurane, endone and a NSAID I haven't heard of before have transported me to a transcendental state of near euphoria. The irony of the situation is almost funny ... quitting dirt biking due to the injuries and then breaking 5 ribs out windsurfing! The CT scan showed I have broken 5 ribs in my mid back and a minor haemo and pneumothorax with lung confusion. The doc said they see this degree of rib breakage in bad car accidents. I really have become genuinely accident prone. They have admitted me and I'm staying in at least till tomorrow. . They say I have to be capable of breathing deeply and mobile before I can go home. We are very lucky to live in a country with such a great medical system.

Janet here. I just spent about 15 minutes typing a post to update everyone, only to post it and discover Andrew had simultaneously already posted something...from the hospital.
But to add my thanks to everyone - it was more than "helping Janet unrig" because you guys dragged Andrew's rig ashore, then unrigged and packed away everything so I could attend to the wounded warrior. Would have been in a bad way without you!It's just as well Sandstone is such a forgiving site as Andrew would have been in much more trouble if he hadn't been able to touch the bottom, and slowly start walking his rig to shore before I realized this wasn't just another crash and went over to investigate. He also has a tiny haemo/pneumothorax (blood and air in the chest cavity due to rib damaging lung tissue) but not a serious problem.

Thanks to John and Adam for their advice on how to manage the new vs. old boards - I finally started to get the hang of my new Naish board and was having a blast in the latter part of the afternoon (despite still being overpowered on the 4.7). We have a 4.0 but left that at home because "we would never need THAT today!" (typical)...and we had nothing between a 5.0 (not enough) and a 5.8 (too much) for Andrew. But we probably won't be going out any time soon sadly :-( Might be time for some life jackets and helmets?!

Ouch!!

Yep, you looked to be not well, confirmed when you weren't able to laugh at my comment about Janet looking for the green needle in the van.
Hope you are out for Christmas and best wishes for a speedy recovery.

I had a good, if lonely session after everyone including ambulance departed.

I was a bit spooked by your injury and took it very easy. Wore my vest as always, as it does provide a bit of rib protection and even wore my helmet.
Luckily there was no one there to laugh at me.

7.0 was a good choice in the end John, it dropped steadily until I got out just before dark.